The workers, some in their overalls, met briefly at a car park close to the station's guard room and then walked to the main gate before being persuaded by their shop stewards to return to work.

Up to 59 jobs are on the line. One shop steward told the workers who walked out: "Come on, this isn't going to get us anywhere. We have a meeting with management in the morning."

But one worker said: "It showed how many of us are feeling here at the moment. A lot of people are unhappy with the situation."

The protest came just a couple of weeks after Babcock Defence Services wrote "at risk" letters to 205 of the 571-strong workforce, outlining moves to make redundancies as part of review of operational support functions.

Babcock took over the contract for servicing Hawk trainer jets at Valley from Brown & Root and Marshall Aerospace (BRAMA) on April 1.

Brian Hoskins, Babcock contracts manager at Valley said: "We have been very clear from the beginning of the year when we said we would be making a 10pc cut in the workforce - about 60 jobs - but now we feel the final numbers will be about half of what we first anticipated.

"I was told people might get together one lunchtime and I wasn't sure what they were going to do. I don't know who instigated the protest."

Explaining the number of "at risk" letters, sent out to staff, Mr Hoskins added: "The letters explained very carefully that the number of people who received them were not all going to be made redundant. The number hasn't changed from between 30 and 59 but what I can tell you it is substantially less than 59.

"We have been working with the union very closely and we have told them we would work as carefully as we could to restrict the numbers we would lose. We are a very different company from BRAMA who were just based here at Valley. We have a headquarters with managers and administrators."